Sunday, March 30, 2014

In the 1980ies to 90ies Horst stood for bonsai in Germany. The bonsai
scene in Germany definitely would not be the same without him. Horst was
and excellent teacher and had thousands of student over the years. He
acted internationally, being in the USA often in the 90ies and to many
other places in the world. Horst was quite a character, a very nice and
gentle man. We will not forget him.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

European hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, collected in Croatia in 2009, in training pot. This tree already was a good bonsai. But then last year it got fire blight and half the tree died. I had almosot given up the whole thing. Now I htook another close look. And it seeems fine. The hawthorn will look nice pretty soon again. Ufortunateyl in our area it might wll bet fire blight again, which is a fungus spread by bees. There is no remedy. The part of the tree that has got it will die. I covered the rest with lots of fungicide and it worked.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Japanese yew, Taxus cuspidata, imported from Japan in 2013. I acquired the tree in may 2013 and started to redesign immediately. I somehow felt that it was a good tree, but not really great. to me it was too nice, too symmetrical, too much man-made, too much bonsai and too little tree, too little soul, more form than soul, too traditional. Anyway I decided recently to drastically change the style: rotate the tree one hour clockwise, tilt it 10° to the left, cut out a few branches so one can see the interesting trunk and deadwood, cut some long branches on the right, bring down the right main branch and make a move to the left, on the left everything long, new pot. The result is clearly a different tree, a tree which does not want to be a standard bonsai, more of a tree then a bonsai, it is in the Fairy Tale Bonsai Style. The new pot is by Walter Venne form Germany. When I showed this work on the German Forum I got the remarks that the tree was great, but the pot was not liked - it 'looks like a rusty iron box'. my response was 'good description, that's exactly what it is supposed to look like. We might get used to it.'